Bes-Ben’s wonderful history in a(nother) lucky find

A few weeks ago I visited an antiquarian market in the city centre of my hometown in Italy.

I was with my mum and we were basically just having a walk, trying to spot extremely expensive antique things that we couldn’t afford (vintage and antique-spotting doesn’t cost anything, does it?).

Weather wasn’t great and soon it started raining. Most of the stall owners covered up their goods so we thought to call it a day and decided to head back home.

While walking back through the market, though, the rain stopped for a while and a few stalls reopened.

One of the first sellers to reopen had a very small stall selling assorted knickknacks and also had three hats, that, abandoned on the stall, didn’t honestly look in very good conditions.

Remembering how we once casually found a Dior hat, we picked up what looked like a 50s hat entirely covered in plastic beads, complete with a veil.

Though the beads were covered in dust the hat looked in otherwise good conditions, and when we turned it over to see if there was a label, we discovered it was a Bes-Ben creation.

With just a few Euros in our pockets and a stall owner who looked more like a hardened up skinhead than an antiquarian we timidly asked how much it cost.

The reply was 20 Euros: apparently he wanted to ask for at least 30 Euros, but it was raining and he wanted to go home soon. Mum, who’s much better at haggling over prices than me, asked if 18 Euros (what we basically had in our pockets…) was still OK and he accepted. So we happily went away with our little Bes-Ben find.

The chapeau we found was done on a heavy mesh base and it's entirely covered with oblong brownish plastic beads of different sizes that make it rather heavy.

The hat has a typical 50s four-leaf clover-like shape with two holes in the centre. 

The coating on the beads seems to be perfect and there are no beads missing, though many of them were covered in dust and had to be cleaned up with a brush. Two rather large beaded butterflies adorn the front of the hat that is also covered with a veil.

Now, in some cases the small veil in Bes-Ben hats was worn at the front and the full veil at the back, but in this case it must be the other way round (so full veil at the front and butterflies at the front) as the little combs inside the hat seem to keep the hat in place much better in this way.

The net veil is decorated here and there with round beads and there are a couple – just a couple – of breaks in it, but no beads missing. I think the net veil is actually one of the most interesting features of this hat: in the most common headdresses and headgear the net veil is a ready-made piece applied on hat.

In this case instead the veil appears to be handmade with the same brown thread that keeps together the beads and it’s an integral part of the hat. I don’t think I have ever seen anything like it and I must admit it looks rather beautiful. There is no number inside the hat, but maybe there was one as there is a little white label that seems to have been partially removed from the hat next to the Bes-Ben label.

The most extraordinary thing about the hat is not its remarkable condition, its price or the lucky way we found it, but the fact that it contains quite a bit of American history.

Bes-Ben was an American millinery company founded by siblings Bess and Benjamin Green-Field in Chicago that became rather popular between the 20s and 60s among society wealthiest women (many of them donned Bes-Ben hats for their coming-out season) and Hollywood starlets.

Ben Green-Field was actually known as “Chicago's Mad Hatter” since the hats he designed were rather whimsical as they featured (take a deep breath…) feathers, beads, jewels, leather dogs, plastic ducks, swans, lob
sters, silk butterflies and frogs, rubber mice, cheese and a mousetrap, palm trees, kitchen utensils, records, zebras with eyeballs that blinked when a secret button was pressed, clasped hands with red painted fingernails holding a cigarette and other rather amazingly humorous details.

Some pieces became memorable: actress and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper worn to the premiere of the film The Razor’s Edge a hat that featured real razors, while for a charitable event with a “Time for Giving“ theme, Green-Field devised a little hat covered with clocks.

Benjamin B. Green-Field was born in Chicago in the late 1890s. His father died when he was a young child so his mother Ida Helen learnt millinery to support the family. When he dropped out of high school, Green-Field apprenticed in the trade.

With $500 and his sister Bessie, he opened a hat store (in which they combined their two names) on State Street and, within eight years, they owned five shops. When his sister left the business, he consolidated them at the North Michigan Avenue address shop that stayed open for 49 years.

When hats dropped in popularity in the late 1960s, Green-Field started creating fanciful pillows as well as hats. The shop in Michigan Avenue remained open until the late 70s.

A Bes-Ben hat wasn’t just a hat, but “the hat”: expensive, but also uniquely quirky and made using high quality materials (as we realised from the hat we found at the market), these pieces were coveted by many women, though only a few could really afford them, among them celebrities such as Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Lucille Ball, Carol Channing, Judy Garland, Gracie Allen and Phyllis Diller.

Less wealthy women could try and get a Bes-Ben hat during the shop famous sales: before closing the shop each summer for the holidays, Green-Field indeed slashed prices at a midnight sale to as little as $5 a hat.

The most interesting thing about these hats was that they had no connection to what was the current trend in fashion, but they were the extravagant result of Green-Field’s creative mind and humour.

Chicago’s "Mad Hatter" left behind him a colourful and witty fashion legacy: he loved to dress up in fabulous brocade jackets and had amazing jewellery pieces made with ivory, coral, diamonds, sapphires and rubies.

He was an experienced traveller (he went around the world over 70 times) and shopper and often bought collectable pieces – from paintings to fabrics, from objects d’art to rugs and furniture – in Paris, New Delhi, Hong Kong and Thailand. Green-Field died at 90, in December 1988, just over a year after his sister Bessie Green-Field Warshawsky (who died in October 1987 at 92). A year after his estate went on auction.

A philanthropist, Green-Field started before his death the Benjamin B. Green-Field foundation in order to improve the quality of life for children and the elderly of Chicago, his hometown.

Many museums all over the world have in their collections a few Bes-Ben pieces and the historical millinery house was the subject of different exhibitions: the 200-piece exhibition “Benjamin Green-Field/ Bes-Ben“ was organised in 1976 by the Chicago Historical Society, that sponsored in 1984 another exhibition, “The Wit and Fantasy of Benjamin Green-Field“ that also featured pieces from his personal wardrobe and decorative home items, many collected on his world travels. The Chicago History Museum also has a collection of Bes-Ben hats, donated by many women who donned them in the past.

You can have a look at further Bes-Ben pieces by clicking on the Foundation Archive page.

I know it’s a bit of a crime to wear an original Bes-Ben hat from the 50s rather than keep it in a proper display, but, honestly, I couldn’t resist trying it on and wonder who was the woman who once bought and wore this unique piece and how it ended up in Italy. 

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